The Smart Guide for European Strategic Cluster Partnerships (ESCP) aims to provide guidance to ESCP on how to develop a successful partnership strategy and on possible actions to achieve joint projects and investments.

The Smart Guide to Cluster Policy is a new tool for policy-makers and practitioners to support industrial modernisation, SME growth and smart specialisation.

The purpose of this Smart Guide is to provide guidance to cluster policy makers and cluster managers in designing and implementing programmes that accelerate the creation of start-ups, spin-offs and scale-ups in emerging industries and in specific value chains.

This Smart Guide is addressed to policy makers and cluster managers engaged in cluster policy making
who are interested in monitoring and evaluating the impact of their policies. The objective is to provide
them with easy access to knowledge material of high practical value and sound methodological
underpinnings, available in a concise and easy to read manner. It thus complements the Smart Guide
Cluster Policy published by the European Commission (2016)1 that had already advocated monitoring